Law Commons^™

Endowment Effects In Chimpanzees, Owen D. Jones, Sarah F. Brosnan, Susan P. Lambeth, Mary Catherine Mareno, Amanda S. Richardson, Steven Schapiro

Owen Jones

Human behavior is not always consistent with standard rational choice predictions. The much-investigated variety of apparent deviations from rational choice predictions provides a promising arena for the merger of economics and biology. Although little is known about the extent to which other species also exhibit these seemingly irrational patterns of human decision-making and choice behavior, similarities across species would suggest a common evolutionary root to the phenomena.

The present study investigated whether chimpanzees exhibit an endowment effect, a seemingly paradoxical behavior in which humans tend to value a good they have just come to possess more than they would have …

Law, Biology, And Property: A New Theory Of The Endowment Effect, Owen D. Jones, Sarah F. Brosnan

Owen Jones

Recent work at the intersection of law and behavioral biology has suggested numerous contexts in which legal thinking could benefit by integrating knowledge from behavioral biology. In one of those contexts, behavioral biology may help to provide theoretical foundation for, and potentially increased predictive power concerning, various psychological traits relevant to law. This Article describes an experiment that explores that context.

The paradoxical psychological bias known as the endowment effect puzzles economists, skews market behavior, impedes efficient exchange of goods and rights, and thereby poses important problems for law. Although the effect is known to vary widely, there are at …

Law And Behavioral Biology, Owen D. Jones, Timothy H. Goldsmith

Owen Jones

Society uses law to encourage people to behave differently than they would behave in the absence of law. This fundamental purpose makes law highly dependent on sound understandings of the multiple causes of human behavior. The better those understandings, the better law can achieve social goals with legal tools. In this Article, Professors Jones and Goldsmith argue that many long held understandings about where behavior comes from are rapidly obsolescing as a consequence of developments in the various fields constituting behavioral biology. By helping to refine law's understandings of behavior's causes, they argue, behavioral biology can help to improve law's …

Econometrics In The Courtroom, Daniel L. Rubinfeld

Daniel L. Rubinfeld

No abstract provided.

Tailoring Legal Protection For Computer Software, Peter S. Menell

Peter Menell

No abstract provided.

Public Actors In Private Markets: Toward A Developmental Finance State, Robert Hockett, Saule Omarova

Saule T. Omarova

The recent financial crisis brought into sharp relief fundamental questions about the social function and purpose of the financial system, including its relation to the “real” economy. This Article argues that, to answer these questions, we must recapture a distinctively American view of the proper relations among state, financial market, and development. This programmatic vision – captured in what we call a “developmental finance state” – is based on three key propositions: (1) that economic and social development is not an “end-state” but a continuing national policy priority; (2) that the modalities of finance are the most potent means of …

Taking Distribution Seriously, Robert C. Hockett

Robert C. Hockett

It is common for legal theorists and policy analysts to think and communicate mainly in maximizing terms. What is less common is for them to notice that each time we speak explicitly of socially maximizing one thing, we speak implicitly of distributing another thing and equalizing yet another thing. We also, moreover, effectively define ourselves and our fellow citizens by reference to that which we equalize; for it is in virtue of the latter that our social welfare formulations treat us as “counting” for purposes of socially aggregating and maximizing. To attend systematically to the inter-translatability of maximization language on …

The Shadows Behind The Law: An Overview Of The Legal System In Ghana, Prince Opoku Agyemang

Prince Opoku Agyemang

Contract Law And Modern Economic Theory, Daniel A. Farber

Daniel A Farber

No abstract provided.

Neoliberalism And The Law: How Historical Materialism Can Illuminate Recent Governmental And Judicial Decision Making, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

Neoliberalism can be understood as the deregulation of the economy from political control by deliberate action or inaction of the state. As such it is both constituted by the law and deeply affects it. I show how the methods of historical materialism can illuminate this phenomenon in all three branches of the the U.S. government. Considering the example the global financial crisis of 2007-08 that began with the housing bubble developing from trade in unregulated and overvalued mortgage backed securities, I show how the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which established a firewall between commercial and investment banking, allowed this …

Flexible Work Schedule, Child Care And Female Employment In Developing Countries: Evidence Using Firm-Level Data, Mohammad Amin

Mohammad Amin

Using newly available data on whether a country gives additional legal rights or not for flexible or part-time work schedule to employees with minor children, we analyze the impact of such provision in the law on female employment. For a representative sample of manufacturing firms in 57 developing countries, we find that the stated provision in the law has a large positive effect on the employment of females. Specifically, on the conservative side, the provision in the law increases the proportion of females in the workforce by 7.7 percentage points, a large effect given that on average females constitute 32 …

La Demostración Jurídica Y Económica: Similitudes Interdisciplinarias Entre Hipótesis, Causas, Efectos Y Normas. La Norma Económica., José Manuel Martin Coronado

José-Manuel Martin Coronado

Hace unos días leí una entrada de blog de un joven abogado de una conocida universidad y (aparentemente) funcionario público, la cual trataba de una aparente metodología para la resolución de casos. Dado el especial interés del autor por el tema metodológico, bastante ausente entre los profesionales del derecho, creí conveniente felicitar su iniciativa. No obstante, también había un elemento de crítica, el relativo a la metodología bastante antigua y poco práctica en términos modernos (actualización, adaptabilidad, amparo informático, etc.). 1.2. Al parecer la crítica fue interpretada como algo más fuerte que la felicitación, aun cuando reitero, el citado autor …

Book Review: Capital And Its Discontents: Conversations With Radical Thinkers In A Time Of Tumult By Sasha Lilly (Pm Press, 2011), Nick J. Sciullo

Nick J. Sciullo

No abstract provided.

If Ethanol Is The Answer, What Is The Question, Peter Z. Grossman

Peter Z. Grossman

Since 2005, in the face of rising oil and gasoline prices, many Americans have looked to plant-based fuels, particularly ethanol, as the "answer" to our energy dilemmas. Section III examines the issues connected specifically to ethanol, how market forces as well as government subsidies have worked to make corn-based ethanol economically viable at times, why that viability has been lost in recent months even with subsidies, and further, why ethanol from corn on the scale the legislation demands is impractical. Clearly it would be technically possible to produce the mandated 15 billion gallons of ethanol, and distilling capacity will nearly …

Reducing The Impact Of Ethnic Tensions On Economic Growth – Economic Or Political Institutions?, Atin Basu Choudhary, Jim Bang, Michael Reksulak

Atin Basu Choudhary

We use a standard growth regression model and show that ethnic tensions reduce per capita growth rates. We also find evidence that “good” economic and political institutions improve per capita growth rates. More importantly, good economic institutions mitigate the effect of ethnic tensions on per capita growth while good political institutions do not. Consequently, it is foremost capitalist freedom that promotes peace and development.

September 11th, John Maynard Keynes, Kenneth J. Arrow, And Me: The Nexus, David Randall Jenkins

David Randall Jenkins, Ph.D.

Judicial Martial Law - Appendix, David Randall Jenkins

David Randall Jenkins

No abstract provided.

Judicial Martial Law, David Randall Jenkins

David Randall Jenkins

No abstract provided.

When Eu Law Meets Arabic Law: Assessment Of Anti-Corruption Law In Morocco And Some Proposed Amendments, Bryane Michael, Abdelaziz Nouaydi

Bryane Michael (bryane.michael@stcatz.ox.ac.uk)

This article reviews the present state of the adoption of anti-corruption legal provisions usually adopted in EU (or candidate) countries in Morocco. Morocco lags behind many countries in its adoption of anti-corruption legislation and the recently established Central Agency of the Prevention of Corruption is unlikely to succeed in speeding up the adoption of these measures. English language translations of a number of Moroccan anti-corruption legal instruments are presented and amendments to these legal instruments are recommended (based on international best practice) in order to increase the likely effectiveness of Moroccan law enforcement institutions in fighting corruption.

Jog, Jogászat És Jogtudomány Hatása Weber Módszertani Nézeteire [The Impact Of Law, Lawyering, And Jurisprudence On Weber’S Methodological Views], Péter Cserne

Péter Cserne

Law and legal science have played a significant, but hitherto underestimated role in Weber's life, both professional and non-academic. Trained as a lawyer, he drew upon an existing vocabulary of legal scholarship and adapted from it, more or less implicitly a large number of conceptual and methodological tools for his sociological projects. The goal of this paper is to identify and evaluate these complex links between Weberian sociology and contemporary legal scholarship, with special emphasis on Jhering's and Jellinek's theories. (This paper is a significantly revised Hungarian version of my 2005 English language essay on Weber.)

A Control Theory Model Of Pricing For A Firm Facing A Stochastic Environment – A Firm’S Dynamic Pricing Strategy When Faced With The Threat Of Antitrust Action, Manak Gupta, Atin Basu Choudhary

Atin Basu Choudhary

No abstract provided.

Post-Tefra Holding Company Strategies, David Randall Jenkins

David Randall Jenkins, Ph.D.